Grateful for this Thanksgiving -- Nov. 17, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A friend tells me she’s still very sad. The election was a “slap in the face of decency,” and she can’t forgive her sisters and their husbands for voting for Donald Trump.

Another friend has trouble sleeping. A third said she’s stuck in election denial.

“It cannot be as bad as we can imagine,” she wrote in an email, adding, “Yes it is.”

Nearly 62 million Hillary Clinton voters are as gloomy as the nearly 61 million Trump voters are jubilant. 

Into this maelstrom of emotions comes the holiday devoted to carbs, calories – and gratitude. What -- now?

Yes, bring on Thanksgiving. We have rarely needed it more. 

We can’t always agree about politics, and shouldn’t. But we can use the pause in our daily routines to gather together, give thanks for what we have and share love with family and friends.

   

We’ve been giving thanks since before we had a president or a country. Massachusetts and Virginia still squabble over where the first Thanksgiving occurred. The Pilgrims’ celebration of the harvest and survival with about 90 Wampanoag Indians was in 1621, two years after Virginia colonists marked their safe arrival with a day of prayerful thanksgiving.

 

In 1789, George Washington signed a proclamation declaring a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” for the new government. Other presidents followed, with a few interruptions. Thomas Jefferson refused to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation because he saw it as a conflict of church and state.

It took a decades-long crusade by Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, to bring the national holiday into being. She wrote her first editorial on the subject in 1837.

Thanksgiving “might, without inconvenience, be observed on the same day of November, say the last Thursday in the month, throughout all New England; and also in our sister states, who have grafted it upon their social system. It would then have a national character, which would, eventually, induce all the states to join in the commemoration of `Ingathering,’” she wrote. 

With foresight, she added: “It is a festival which will never become obsolete, for it cherishes the best affections of the heart – the social and domestic ties.”

After many more editorials and through Hale’s persistent appeals, more than 30 states and territories had Thanksgiving on their calendars by the 1850s.

Because Hale never gave up, our national Thanksgiving holiday was created at a time even more divisive than ours. She finally persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to issue a proclamation in October 1863, as the Civil War raged.

Lincoln put out a call to “fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Secretary of State William H. Seward, not Lincoln, actually wrote the proclamation, although Lincoln signed it. Seward’s original manuscript was sold a year later to raise money for Union troops, according to Abraham Lincoln Online.

   

The holiday was celebrated on the last Thursday of November by tradition – until President Franklin D. Roosevelt thought he’d boost retail sales by moving Thanksgiving up a week in 1939, from Nov. 30 to Nov. 23. An uproar ensued, and some states celebrated two Thanksgivings. Two years later Congress set Thanksgiving in law as the fourth Thursday.

   

Today we know that practicing gratitude – and not just on Thanksgiving -- is good for us. Hundreds of academic studies have found physical, psychological and social benefits in gratitude – from lower blood pressure to less loneliness to more optimism.

Gratitude is “an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we’ve received,” Robert A. Emmons, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, wrote in an essay for Greater Good, a University of California, Berkeley, website.

Emmons, a leading authority in the study of gratitude, said by practicing gratitude, “we recognize that the sources of this goodness are outside of ourselves.”

Some things haven’t changed in 400 years. Happy Thanksgiving.

©2016 Marsha Mercer

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Everything you need to know about vetoes -- Feb. 5, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The vetoes are coming. The House plans to vote next week on a Senate-passed bill approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and that likely will give President Barack Obama his first chance this year to use his veto pen.

After vetoing just two bills in six years, Obama already has threatened to reject at least 10 bills contemplated or under consideration by the Republican-controlled Congress.

That may sound impressive, but Obama is a veto piker compared with Grover Cleveland, the so-called king of vetoes. In his eight years as president, Cleveland wielded his veto authority 584 times.

But Cleveland takes second in total numbers to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his 12 years in the Oval Office, FDR had 635 vetoes – and he had Democratic congresses his entire tenure.

As we haven’t seen any vetoes since 2010, here’s a quick refresher on what Woodrow Wilson (44 vetoes) called a president’s “most formidable prerogative.”

The word veto comes from the Latin “I forbid” and refers to the president’s power to disapprove a bill and prevent its becoming law. The word veto doesn’t appear in the Constitution, but the framers put the power in Article 1, Section 7 as a check on the legislative process.

A president has 10 days, excluding Sundays, to sign a bill passed by Congress for it to become law. With a regular veto, the president returns the bill to the chamber where it originated, usually with an explanation of his objections. Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and the House.

If Congress adjourns during the 10 days, the president can’t return the bill. His decision to withhold his signature is a pocket veto, and Congress does not have the opportunity to override.

Since 1789, when the federal government was founded, 37 of the 44 presidents have used their veto power. In all there have been 2,564 vetoes -- 1,498 regular and 1,066 pocket.

The last president to serve two terms without a single veto? Thomas Jefferson.

Congress has overridden just 4 percent of vetoes, the Congressional Research Service reports, but the hurdle to overcoming a president’s objections has dropped in recent decades. Since John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, Congress has overridden 16 percent of vetoes.  

Democrats controlled both houses of Congress when Obama wielded his veto pen in 2009 and 2010, and neither veto was overridden.

You won’t be surprised that both veto threats and vetoes occur more often when the president and Congress are of different parties. Threats help the president shape legislation because the party in power knows it will need the support of two-thirds of the Congress to make law stick over a president’s disapproval.

“For highly consequential legislation drafted during divided party government, it is hardly an exaggeration to say the president keeps up a veritable drum-beat of veto threats,” Princeton University professor Charles M. Cameron wrote in an essay on “The Presidential Veto” published in 2009.

The vast majority of vetoes are inconsequential in that they have little public policy effect, he says. Congress has attempted to override about 80 percent of consequential vetoes during divided party government, with a success rate of 45 percent, adds Cameron, who is the author of the 2000 book “Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the Politics of Negative Power.” 

Democrat Cleveland had a Democratic Congress for only two of his eight years as president. Of his 346 regular vetoes and 238 pocket vetoes, only seven were overridden. Most of the regular vetoes in his first term disallowed bills to grant veterans benefits to people who didn’t qualify. Even considering their symbolic value, though, “Cleveland’s vetoes…didn’t amount to much,” Cameron writes.

George W. Bush was the first president since John Quincy Adams to serve a full term without a veto, but that was in the post-9/11 era when Congress was more deferential. Bush issued 12 vetoes in his second term – 11 when Democrats controlled the Senate and House – and four were overridden.

Dwight Eisenhower used the veto to force compromise with Democratic activists, and Bill Clinton forced House Republicans led by Newt Gingrich to moderate, says Cameron.   

So as the vetoes come once again, we’ll see if Obama can use his leverage to force this Republican Congress to moderate its demands.  

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Camp Hoover tells a presidential tale -- Sept. 12, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Before the ranger started a tour of Camp Hoover in Shenandoah National Park the other day, she asked visitors: What do you think of when you hear the name Hoover? 

For a moment, all you heard was birdsong. Then a woman ventured, “FBI?”

That would be J. Edgar Hoover. Ranger Danielle Yoder gently explained that Camp Hoover was President Herbert Hoover’s summer White House.

Today, many people might find it hard to place the 31^st president. Hoover won the 1928 election in a landslide, only to see his popularity and prestige evaporate as the economy collapsed in the Great Depression.  His name became synonymous with misery.

Hoovervilles were the shantytowns that sprang up when the homeless sought refuge in cardboard and scrap metal shacks. Hoover blankets were newspapers stuffed inside coats to keep out the cold; Hoover Pullmans were the rail boxcars that desperate people rode to start life anew.  

Hoover blamed congressional foes for refusing to enact his programs to deal with the crisis, although he arguably worsened the Depression by signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff bill in 1930. Aimed at protecting American farmers and businesses, the law raised the average import tax to about 40 percent.

In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt easily defeated Hoover. Historians mark Hoover as a brilliant, compassionate humanitarian -- and a failure as president.

A visit to the presidential retreat provides a sympathetic, personal portrait of a beleaguered president and his independent wife.  Byrd Visitors Center has a first-rate exhibit about the history of the park and the Hoovers’ getaway. The park service’s free bus tours start from the center. There I met Bill Jones, a newly retired teacher who, in his first summer as a seasonal naturalist park ranger, became intrigued by the Hoovers and started reading everything he could find on them.

Hoover’s life is a classic American success story, says Jones, whose enthusiasm is infectious. Hoover, the son of a Quaker blacksmith in Iowa, was orphaned by age 10 and was sent to live with relatives in Oregon. He was graduated in the first class at Stanford, where he met his future wife, Lou Henry, the university’s first woman geology graduate. She, like Hoover, loved the outdoors. 

Hoover made a fortune as a mining engineer and became known as a humanitarian during and after World War I, leading U.S. food relief efforts in Europe that fed more than 300 million people. 

Hoover’s program cut Americans’ food consumption 15 percent without rationing, through such voluntary efforts as wheatless, meatless and porkless meals and days every week.

Even before his 1929 inauguration, then in March, Hoover realized he’d need to escape the “pneumatic hammer” of the nation’s capital. He wanted a rustic place within 100 miles of Washington, at an elevation above 2,500 feet to be free of disease-carrying mosquitoes and the capital’s sweltering heat and humidity in those pre-air conditioning days, and a good trout stream to satisfy his passion for fishing. He found it at the headwaters of the Rapidan River in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

Hoover, who refused a salary as president, paid for the 164 acres and the furnishings himself, and the Marines built the 13 buildings as a training assignment. The presidential hideaway had a mess hall to serve 20, horse stables, a trout hatchery, a town hall and guest cabins. Building Camp Rapidan, as the Hoovers called it, meant more roads, electricity and telephone lines into the remote mountains. They entertained frequently, and their guest list was a “who’s who” of American business and government. 

“I have discovered that even the work of government can be improved by leisurely discussions of its problems out under the trees where no bells or callers jar one’s thoughts,” Hoover said.

After using the camp from 1929 to 1933, the Hoovers gave it to the federal government, with the idea that it would be used by future presidents. FDR visited once and found the terrain too challenging. He built his presidential retreat, Shangri-la, in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. President Dwight Eisenhower renamed it Camp David.

Visitors today can go inside two of the three buildings still standing at Camp Hoover, including the Hoovers’ simple cottage, which they had painted brown to contrast with the ornate White House and its political noise, worries and cares. The camp remains as secluded in the mountains as Hoover’s life is in the public memory.

©2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Spare a dime? Paying for government that helps millions -- July 28, 2011 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Maybe the question should be who in America doesn’t get a break from Uncle Sam.

It’s not just the fat cats, Big Oil and General Electric that get special indulgences. The generous uncle makes life sweeter for ordinary folk too, although few even realize it.

Sixty percent of people who take the home mortgage deduction on their income tax returns say they haven’t used a government social program. Forty-four percent of Social Security recipients deny they’ve received any benefit as do about 40 percent of Medicare recipients, according to a study by Cornell University political scientist Suzanne Mettler.

A review of the role of government is in order -- before lobbyists swarm Capitol Hill to “help” Congress make program cuts totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. Remember: We’ve seen only overall framework numbers – not specific spending cuts. Those decisions will be made later – trust us, lawmakers say.

Here’s a stunning stat: The federal government sends out 70 million checks a month, says President Obama. No, it’s closer actually to 80 million, says Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Even 80 million doesn’t begin to define the government’s scope. The Washington Post figured that in all some 211.8 million checks were payable -- in June alone.

The Post’s analysis of who gets the 80 million checks, or electronic payments, found the largest group was Social Security recipients – 56 million. The disabled, veterans, federal workers and retirees received payments as did non-defense contractors, railroad retirees, coal miners with black lung, IRS vendors and taxpayers receiving refunds from the IRS.

Besides those checks are 100 million Medicare payments to doctors, hospitals, labs and other providers, more than 21 million households receiving food stamps, 6.4 million active and retired defense personnel , and 1.6 million defense travel and other invoices. Medicaid, the health program for the poor and elderly run by states, wasn’t on the Post’s list, but the Census Bureau reported that there were 58 million Medicaid beneficiaries in 2008.

Everybody assumes the cuts will affect someone else, lop off waste and fraud, hit the less deserving. Nobody wants to go back to the days when getting old meant living in poverty and sickness.

But constitutional conservatives do like to quote James Madison, who said he couldn’t lay his finger on the article of the Constitution that granted Congress the right to spend the money of constituents on “objects of benevolence.”

Madison was talking about aid to French refugees from what’s now Haiti – not about medical care or benefits to seniors. But tea partiers and others who think government should shrink to the limited powers explicitly granted in the Constitution seize on his statement as vindication for ending Social Security as we know it and dismantling safety net programs. Even Obama said Social Security and Medicare were on the table. Everybody says changes won’t touch anyone 55 and older.

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas., a presidential hopeful, contends that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all unconstitutional because the Constitution doesn’t specifically call for social insurance programs. He discounts the 1937 Supreme Court ruling that found Social Security constitutional.

Critics of government would like to forget that the Constitution also says government was established to promote the general welfare. They say liberals have misconstrued the phrase.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt cited the “general welfare” in June 1934 when he proposed a new social insurance program that would help shield people from the “hazards and vicissitudes of life.”

“Fear and worry based on unknown danger contribute to social unrest and economic demoralization,” he wrote. “If, as our Constitution tells us, our federal government was established among other things ‘to promote the general welfare,’ it is our plain duty to provide for that security upon which welfare depends.”

These days the angry talk in Washington is more about getting political advantage in 2012 than promoting welfare for generations to come. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., holds fast to his declaration that his chief job is to limit Obama to one term.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the role of Congress is to thwart a president’s future or that the president’s role is step aside and keep his collar and cuffs clean for his re-election bid.

Unfortunately, neither this president nor congressional leaders are likely to say, as Roosevelt did, “Among our objectives I place the security of the men, women and children of the nation first.” Millions who rely on Uncle Sam face uncertainty.

© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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